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Monday, June 30, 2014

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed his 33rd and 34th death warrants since taking office in 2011, but it's just shuffling around some paperwork. Nobody has been executed in Pennsylvania since 1990, with nearly 200 inmates currently on death row in Pennsylvania. Thanks to activist judges who continue to accept appeals from the inmates, most of the condemned prisoners will die of old age.

The Pope John Paul II Golden Panthers baseball team stopped in
Harrisburg to visit state Rep. Mike Vereb on its way to winning the
state championship in Centre County. The team and Vereb had their picture taken inside the historic chamber of the state House of Representatives.

From Pa. State Rep. Mike Vereb's office:

The
players and coaches of the Pope John Paul II Golden Panthers baseball
team made history 10 days ago on the main campus of Penn State
University by capturing the school’s first state championship since its
doors opened in 2010. The state House today in Harrisburg commemorated
that accomplishment by adopting a state resolution introduced by Rep.
Mike Vereb (R-Montgomery).

"We want these young men to know that their community and the Commonwealth are proud of their accomplishment," Vereb said.

The Golden
Panthers defeated the Harriton Rams 4-2 in the state championship game
on June 13 at Lubrano Park's Medlar Field in University Park.

The game was a
rematch of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA)
District 1 title game held 15 days earlier. Both schools are from
Montgomery County.

"Montgomery County really showed this year that it is overflowing with high school baseball talent," Vereb said.

The state
championship came during Coach John Duffy's first season with the team.
Throughout the season, the Golden Panthers found ways to squeeze out
close victories by winning 15 games by two runs or less.

"These guys
showed an ability to persevere through adversity and find ways to win,"
said Vereb. "On behalf of the state House of Pennsylvania and the
people it represents, I congratulate Coach Duffy and the PIAA state
champion Golden Panthers."

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Tom Wolf is the Democratic nominee in the race for Pennsylvania governor, but Wolf doesn't seem to be getting along these days with the leaders of the state Democratic Party. That does not bode well for Wolf, who spent all of his money trying to win the Democratic nomination and will need the help of the party to challenge incumbent Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. But the party leaders have already shot down Wolf's attempt to hand-pick a new state party chairman.

It appears the Democratic Party's nominee for Pa. governor doesn't carry much weight with the party leadership. Tom Wolf's hand-picked candidate for state party chairman, Katie McGinty, was forced to withdraw her candidacy when it became apparent the party leaders wanted someone else. That doesn't bode well for Wolf.

"The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their
errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their
institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress
the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these
irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information
of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to
contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the
people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people,
the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to
me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or
newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to
prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those
papers & be capable of reading them." -- Thomas Jefferson

Too bad most Americans today don't share Jefferson's views. While government continues to grow every year and dominate all aspects of our lives, there are fewer and fewer people serving as watchdogs against government.

"A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation." ― Ronald Reagan

Earlier this year, we learned that Obama released 68,000 illegals with criminal records from US prisons into the streets of our cities. Now, we have an estimated 60,000 illegals dumped on military bases and US cities once they're allowed to enter the country from the open border with Mexico. Is this all part of Obama's master plan to "fundamentally transform" this country? When will Obama supporters wake up? These people may end up raping or killing one of your relatives or at the very least, take away those government benefits you've been enjoying.

In addition to having the second highest paid state lawmakers in the country, Pennsylvania taxpayers fork over $301 million a year to keep the nation's largest full-time legislature in business. Is it worth it?

Catch James Phyrillas as the Chesire Cat and
Patrick Phyrillas as the Mad Hatter in the Reading Community Players
production of "Disney's Alice in Wonderland Jr." coming June 27-28-29 to
the Hendel House, 746 Centre Ave., Reading, PA. For ticket information
(and to print out a discount coupon), go to http://www.readingcommunityplayers.com/tickets/

Bill O'Reilly is fuming about Obama's swap of 5 Taliban chiefs for one American who may have deserted in Afghanistan:

Make no mistake, the Taliban poses a grave danger to Afghanistan, the
region, and even the world. They will stop at nothing to impose their
vision of an oppressive Islamic state. And now this evil organization
has five of its best and brightest walking free, perhaps anticipating
future battles against the infidels.

President Obama, as
commander-in-chief, has an obligation to protect this country from harm,
but freeing five notorious war criminals does just the opposite. This
whole fiasco is a huge victory for the jihadists and will inspire even
more violence in the world.

Pennsylvania law might guarantee state employees a set pension when they retire, but mathematics has its own laws.

All the legal protections in the world mean nothing if a pension plan is insolvent. Retirees in Detroit just found this out. If our commonwealth is to avoid this hard lesson, we need to act with a political resolve that has been lacking too long.

Every dollar saved through pension reform is another dollar for our children's educations, or another dollar to help get someone off the waiting list for services they need, or another dollar to keep our citizens safe.

The facts are simple:

For nearly a decade beginning in 2001, the state significantly expanded pension benefits without covering the costs of this expansion, and then compounded the error by failing to pay what it should have into its two pension funds — the State Employee Retirement System and the Pennsylvania School Employee Retirement System — underfunding the systems by more than $5.9 billion.

The Great Recession of 2008 brought the political games with pensions to an abrupt halt. Global financial chaos in the past decade, coupled with the near collapse of the mortgage industry, set off a chain of events that produced close to zero gain for investments of all types — including pension funds, which rely heavily on investment income.

Pennsylvania, like many other states, had counted on a 7.5 percent return on investment. It never arrived. Instead, the burden went on the taxpayers to make up the difference and the pension hole deepened.

Right now, SERS and PSERS are a combined $50 billion short of what they need to cover current and future retirees, and the figure is climbing. By 2018, the unfunded liability for pensions will pass $65 billion. Every household in this state will owe $13,000 to cover that debt.

The financial world has noticed.

In the past year Moody's and Fitch, two of the major investment ratings firms, lowered the state's rating. The lower your credit rating, the higher the interest you pay on what you borrow.

So what happens next?

If we do nothing the short answer is, "pay more, get less."

In the case of PSERS, roughly half the pension cost is borne by school districts, meaning skyrocketing property taxes.

As more of the state budget goes to covering pension debt, money is crowded out for everything from classrooms to public safety. Potential job creators will take one look at this tax burden and turn away.

Pension debt could drag Pennsylvania into an economic death spiral.

We need to do two things:

First, we need to face economic reality.

We must address our spiraling pension costs at both the state level and in every school district across the commonwealth. This will mean hard choices, including how the state will pay for another $600 million in state funding to our current obligations to our employees and retirees. Doing nothing is no longer an option. It will only make the bad worse.

Second, we need to rethink how we do pensions in the years ahead.

The traditional pension structure must be replaced with 401(k) style defined contribution plans. We can no longer have the taxpayer foot the bill when investments don't live up to expectations. Nor should we rely upon old return assumptions in hope that we can grow our way out of the problem. We also need to recognize that people are living longer, which means added cost to taxpayers under the current pension systems.

State Rep. Mike Tobash has introduced a plan that would combine the traditional benefits of a guaranteed retirement for employees with a contribution plan that would limit taxpayer liability if the pension's investments underperform.

Risk to the taxpayer would be capped at $50,000 of a public employee's or school teacher's salary. Any retirement contribution for salary above $50,000 would go into an account that will be self-directed and fully portable.

The Tobash plan only affects new employees. It also ensures that existing benefits already being paid out to retirees will not be touched. They earned it and they will receive it

But the key to the Tobash plan is that it saves taxpayers, $11 billion over the cost of the current pension system.

Uncontrolled debt and pension cost threaten to undo the progress our state has made. The fundamental problem is not going to go away and the only question is whether we deal with pension doubt now, if it deals us a fiscal hammer blow later.

I am urging the General Assembly to help our state and local school districts by passing pension reform by the end of this session. I ask each of you to call your local legislator and do the same.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

The stunning defeat of House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Tuesday's Virginia primary election is being ascribed to not necessarily a single issue but a number of things that came together to create the perfect political storm.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor knocked to the curb by Virginia voters. I can't say I'm sorry to see him go. He betrayed the conservative cause. It's time to replace House Speaker John Boehner! Cantor out in Tea Party shocker | TheHill

More egg on Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane's face. The Democrat spent $180,000 to "investigate" if Gov. Tom Corbett had anything to do with the delay in bringing charges against Penn State's Jerry Sandusky. Kane's report vindicates Corbett. Turns out it was all a political witch-hunt on the part of Kane. Pollster: Report could help Corbett's reelection bid - abc27 WHTM

After years of misleading articles about Obama's failed economic policies, The Associated Press finally asks "Where have all the missing American workers gone?" The U.S. workforce-participation rate was just 62.8 percent in May, the lowest in decades. Millions of Americans have given up looking for work.

President
Obama’s decision to ignore a law requiring him to consult with Congress
before releasing five senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay in
exchange for the return of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl is extremely
disturbing,
but hardly surprising.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama has demonstrated a limitless contempt for our country’s system of checks and balances.

When our immigration laws clashed with
his political agenda, the President ordered Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officials to ignore the law and stop deporting some young
people who
came into the country illegally.

While 5 million American workers were struggling
with the realization that they were losing the health insurance
coverage that they liked and were promised they could keep, Mr. Obama
was using his now famous pen to change the law to
grant waivers to his politically-connected allies and a one-year delay
of the mandate that corporations and other large employers provide
insurance coverage to their workers.

In this White House, the political ends justify the means every time.

Trading five Taliban operatives for Sgt.
Bergdahl again showed that President Obama simply can’t resist an
opportunity to bypass Congress and ignore duly-enacted laws. And, in
this case, a law that he enacted.

Nobody wants an American soldier to be held captive by radical terrorists.

However, the National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2014 supported by Democrats and Republicans in Congress
and signed into law by the President last year requires the Secretary of
Defense to give Congress at least 30 days
notice of any plan to release terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay.

In addition, the law requires the Administration
to determine whether the risk posed by the terrorism suspect will be
substantially mitigated and that releasing the terror suspect is in the
national security interests of the United States.

The intent of the law is clear. It’s simply bad
policy to allow one person – whether Republican or Democrat -- to make a
decision about setting free radical terrorists who have plotted to kill
Americans and harm our allies.

Criticism of the unilateral decision by the President to release five Taliban commanders has been loud bipartisan.

“It’s very disappointing that there was not a
level of trust to justify alerting us to that,” said Democratic Sen.
Diane Feinstein, who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“The White House is pretty unilateral about what
they want to do when they want to do it.”

Constitutional law expert and George Washington
University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley said in recent media
interviews that there’s no question the Bergdahl-Taliban swap violated
the law.

Turley also discussed the seriousness of the President’s refusal to accept the Constitutional limits on his power.

“People don't seem to understand that the
separation of powers is not about the power of these branches, it's
there to protect individual liberty, it's there to protect us from the
concentration of power,” Turley said during a recent
television interview. “That's what is occurring here. I've said it
before; Barack Obama is really the president Richard Nixon always wanted
to be. He's been allowed to act unilaterally in a way that we've fought
for decades.”

Conceding the fight would be irresponsible.

At a minimum, Congress should exercise thorough
oversight of the Bergdahl-Taliban exchange to determine why the law was
not followed and examine how the release of these senior Taliban leaders
leaves our troops and our citizens more
vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

All five of the Taliban commanders released by
the President had close ties to al-Qaeda. It’s highly likely they’ll
reunite with radical terror groups determined to carry out more attacks
against U.S. troops and, possibly, American citizens.

As for finding a lasting solution for ensuring
every President fulfils his Constitutional obligation to enforce all
laws, the House passed in March the proposed Executive Needs to
Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law (ENFORCE the Law) Act.

Under the legislation, either the House or
Senate would be able to pass a resolution by a simple majority
authorizing lawsuit against the Executive Branch for failing to
faithfully execute the law. This action would be heard by a three-judge
panel in a federal District Court. Appeals from the three-judge panel
ruling would be expeditiously heard by the United States Supreme Court.

If Senator Feinstein and other Democratic
lawmakers are sincere about their frustration with the President
sidestepping Congress before making a deal to release five Taliban
commanders, then they should call on Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid to allow a vote on this legislation.

If we fail to act to restore the co-equal
balance of power between Congress and the President, nobody should be
surprised the next time President Obama -- or any president -- acts like
an emperor.

Congressman Jim Gerlach is a Republican who represents
Pennsylvania’s 6th District, which includes parts of Berks, Chester,
Lebanon and Montgomery counties.

Interesting news from the Corbett for Governor campaign. A second Pennsylvania labor union has endorsed Republican Tom Corbett for re-election:

HARRISBURG, PA – The Corbett-Cawley campaign today announced that Boilermakers Local 154 have endorsed Governor Tom Corbett for re-election. They are the second major labor union to endorse Governor Corbett. In endorsing Corbett, Boilermakers Local 154 Business Manager Raymond C. Ventrone touted Governor Corbett’s commitment to the energy industry in Pennsylvania.

"Since taking office, Governor Tom Corbett has kept his promise to fight for Pennsylvania jobs, making our Commonwealth stronger and more prosperous for our members, their families and all Pennsylvanians," said Business Manager Raymond Ventrone. "We look forward to what the next four years of Governor Corbett’s leadership will hold for Pennsylvania’s future and are proud to stand with him as he seeks re-election this November."

The Boilermakers have a strong construction presence in the energy sector, including the construction and maintenance of power plants, electric power generation plants (including thermal, nuclear, and hydroelectric), gas turbines, gas processing plants and refineries (including oil and chemical).

The Laborers' District Council of Western Pennsylvania also endorsed Corbett in late May, shortly after Corbett officially received the Republican nomination for re-election. In endorsing Corbett, Laborers' District Council of Western Pennsylvania President and Business Manager Philip Ameris stated Governor Corbett is "someone you can trust and I think he's moving Pennsylvania in the right direction. He's very pragmatic and he keeps his word.” On their website, Ameris says, "it's not about the Republican or Democratic Parties. It's about Union issues. We will support, and hold accountable, candidates that are interested in protecting the working class."

For more information on the Corbett-Cawley campaign’s "More Jobs, Less Taxes" agenda, please visit www.tomcorbettforgovernor.com.

Despite the non-stop promotion of abortion by the Democratic Party and its liberal media allies, only 42% of Americans say it is morally acceptable, according to a new Gallup poll. (Nearly 60% of Democrats are OK with abortion.)

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Why Politics Matter

“Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high – lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933.” –– Charles Krauthammer

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About Me

Tony A. Phyrillas is a leading conservative columnist, commentator and blogger based in Pennsylvania.
A veteran newspaperman with 33 years experience as a reporter, editor, photographer and columnist, Phyrillas received a first place award in 2010 for best column from the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors and a first place award in 2007 for Best Opinion Column from Suburban Newspapers of America. He was recognized for column writing in 2007 by the Society of Professional Journalists, Keystone Chapter and in 2006 by the SPJ Greater Philadelphia Chapter.
Phyrillas is ranked among the most influential political bloggers in Pennsylvania by BlogNetNews.com.
Odyssey: The World of Greece magazine named Phyrillas one of the leading Greek-American bloggers in the world.
A Penn State University graduate, Phyrillas is the editor/content manager of The Mercury, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning daily newspaper in Pottstown, Pa.
Phyrillas made frequent appearances on talk radio and as a panelist on the "Journalists Roundtable" program on the Pennsylvania Cable Network.
He co-hosted a weekly radio program on WPAZ 1370 AM for 2 years.